Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
It's been a tough year for the jewish community, and really not just for the jewish community, but for anyone who cares about the fate of the free world. If you're a listener of this show, I know I don't need to explain why one of the lighthouse for me this year has been a superior. It's a quarterly journal with one goal, to circulate and investigate ideas that will create a thriving jewish future.
It's edited by my friend red Stevens of the new york times, expLoring the intersection of american culture and the issues impacting the jewish community. The pear has featured writers, you know, including David moment, you've olive in an E I. lake.
And although many of you have likely been reading sup pear online, every issue of the print edition is really a work of art. And until now, IT hasn't been available to the public. As the war in the middle east heats up, the editors of appear have decided to make the print edition of the journal available free of charge.
Yes, you heard that correctly. You can sign up right now for a free one year subscription. Disappear, one of the most important publications today, the theme of their forthcoming issue is the university, and you can always count on superior to deliver thought provoking and heard.
Dox takes on how to fix IT subscribe online at the peer journal dot org slash honestly so that you can begin your free subscription with the next issue. Super is also commemorating the first anniversary of the october seven co attacks with its one year leader series. Its conversations with some of the best authors, including free press contributor, historian and former israeli ambassador to the united states, Michael orin, go to the pier journal dot org e slash honestly to learn more and begin your free prints b scription today.
From the free press, this is honestly, and i'm very wise. Somebody asked me the other day how I planned to commemorate october s and I found myself speechless fuddled by the question, how do you offer an allergy when the war is not yet over and one hundred and one hostages, those still alive and the bodies of the murdered, are not yet returned home? How do you remember a catastrophe when it's still unfolding? How do you mark a past event that feels as though he was the pre lue to a much deeper darkness whose dimensions we .
are still discovering?
How do you look at something with a sense of distance when that thing has revealed so much so close to home? The genocidal war launched by iran and its proxies a year ago this morning began with rocket fire and a ground invasion by hump alias, who Carried maps of every keyboard and village.
These maps made by palestinians who worked inside israel told the terrorists where the daycare centers were, where the weapons were stored, which families owned dog. After several thousand terrorists targeting civilians had raped, murdered and kidnapped, they were followed by waves of ordinary dozens who played their role in a day of slaughter with millennia old echoes in jewish history. Take a moment and pull up that infamous picture of Sherry by bus. Look at the terror on her face as SHE clings to her red headed children, nine month old baby fear and her four year old son, are you? IT is an image I have thought of every day for the past year, an image that flashes across my eyes when I put my own children to sleep at night.
I don't mean to say that the more than twelve hundred human beings murdered by hamas terrorists that day at a music festival in their beds, in shelters where they sought safety, are symbols of history or politics or anything else, only that what happened on october seventh, what hamas did, was exactly what they had always said they would do back to their founding charter, which calls for the genocide of the jewish people in stealing the bus, bus family, and in buttering and damming and burning their neighbors. The terror group was doing exactly what I promised. The promise of america, though, was to give bigotry no sanction, as our first president rode in seventy ninety to the hebrew congregation of newport road island.
May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land, washington road, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants, while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine in Victory and there should be none to make him afraid but on october seven, the twenty twenty three, the enemies of washington s. Vision and of america's founding impulse began to reveal themselves here at home as the news of the scope of the slaughter was still registering and the tally of hostages still being made. The final count was two hundred and forty people from forty countries Carried off into gaza.
Like Barbara spoils of war. Some self described progressive group's herod home and across the west began to celebrate. More than thirty student clubs at harvard put out a letter holding israel quote, entirely responsible for the massacre. Israel, not how much, but israel.
This letter was .
put out on october th, as homes terrorists were still ruling israel self, and as his bullet began its assault on israel's north from lebanon. Surely IT had to be some terrible mistake, a sick prank, but the statement was sincere, and IT wasn't an anomaly.
In october twenty twenty three, just in that first month, George washington university students projected the words glory to our murder and free palestine from the river to the sea in giant letters on campus buildings at Cooper union in manhattan, jewish students had to hide in the library from a mob pounding on the door at columbia. Professor or Joseph masi called the slaughter awesome. At cornell, professor Russell rick ford said IT was energizing and exhilarating.
At printer, hundreds of students chanted globalize, the interfax, which can only mean one thing, open season on jews worldwide. At N. Y, U, students held up posters that read, keep the world clean with drawings of jewish stars in garbage cans.
Over the weeks and months that followed, posters with the faces of the hostages were put up on lamps and bulleting boards, on campuses and in cities across north amErica and europe. And what happened was that Young people, and sometimes not so Young people, started tearing them down. At first, we rationalize this by assuming that the people tearing them down were abNormal.
The problem was there were more than a few of them, including college professors, and that many of them were glial. They were smiling. Posters of lost cats aren't systematically torn down by broadweald producers and graduate students. And yet these were human being stolen from their beds. The only same conclusion was that our times are in Normal.
And to pretend that they are is as delusional as insisting that the supreme leader of iran was merely speaking metaphorically when he said over the weekend at his first public sermon in almost five years, israel is a malicious regime that will not last long, a total derailed ment from civilization, that is, health. The nobel prize winning german writer herd Miller described the hamas massacre her in her extraordinary speech delivered this past may, but that phrase, a total derailed ment from civilization, also included derailment ments much closer to home. Listen to the words being shouted on our streets.
Just this past weekend, thousands of people in toronto gather to declare, we don't want two states take us back to forty eight. The kind of call for the elimination of israel IT has been heard in cities across the west over the last year. At a rally in philadelphy, one speaker recalled on october seventh, when I was watching those resistance fighters flying into palestine on parag lider, I was cheering in berlin.
Protesters shouted in arabic, anyone have a bullet? Either you kill a je or give IT to hamas. There is no political argument consistent with the values of a free society that justifies this kind of behaviour. There is no moral universe.
That explains how two visibly jewish students in my hometown at the university of pittsburgh were recently assaulted with a bottle, or how a literary festival in new york recently cancelled a panel because the moderator was a sighest, or why a now former member of congress downplayed the sexual violence jewish women suffered on octo 7， or why medical students and doctors in cefron cisco shouted into father, into fota, long live into father. This is not to say that the majority of americans aren't horrified by these examples and hundreds of others, or that they are without precedent. In one thousand nine hundred and thirty nine, after Crystal t more than twenty thousand americans flooded medicine square garden to cheer for aid off hitler.
Today, with the distance of almost a century, that incident shames us. We owe IT to ourselves, into our country, to be no less horrified when today, in new york city and its cities across the west, hamas allies take to the streets to celebrate the massacre. So today, on the anniversary of october seven, twenty twenty three, there will be no closure, though today, as with every single day that has a lap since the massacre, re, I will think of the human beings, each one, a world under herself, destroyed by Terry, I will pray for the hostages and for the recovery of those who have been liberated, and I will pray for a lasting peace, not just for israelis, but for the palestinians, the lebanon, the yemenis, the iranians, syrians and all of those terrorized by murderous st.
Governments and terror groups who choose death over life. And I also pray for america, my home, because we expected her master kill juice. What we didn't expect was that any americans would celebrate IT. People often ask me why the free press has covered this story with such relentlessness and focus. Everything I just said that the answer.
Today, and honestly, we're going to reply the first episode that we made out of our reporting trip to israel. Lh, january IT asked a question that remains not just relevant but urgent a year later, as israeli soldiers enter lebanon by foot and his nonstop rockets from hezbollah, ballistic missiles from iran rained down on israel, civilians, what are you willing to die for? That's the question this episode asks, is a question that typically feel so outside of the current american experience.
When was the last time that you asked yourself, what would I do if I had to fight for my home, for my family, for my nation? As you'll hear in this episode, when the men and women of israel were confronted with the worst disaster imaginable, would emerged with the level of civic obligation, duty and sacrifice they themselves didn't imagine they were capable of. These are their incredible stories will be right back.
This episode is proud be sponsored by the adam and gila milstein family foundation. Adam and gila millston, or business people who became full anthropic and who have since built in network of donors, committed to empowering a wide range of non profit organizations. These organizations help serve the milstein emission of combatting anti semitism, supporting the state of israel and strengthening american values here at home.
The milstein family foundation is also dedicated to promoting and reinforcing the U. S. Israel alliance and to confronting all forms of bigotry and hatred. They believe in safeguarding the shared principles of freedom, human rights and democracy that underpin both israel and amErica through numerous initiatives. The foundation is leading efforts to eliminate the common threats to those values.
To learn more about the adam and gila milstein family foundation and the impact for work that they support, please visit milton F F dot org g let me spell that for you. M I L S T E I N F F dot org, or contact adam directly at adam at milstein F F dot work. The credit card competition act would help small business owners like rayman. We asked rayman why the credit card competition act matters .
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Within a few hours of landing in israel, I found myself standing in the rain, looking out into gaza. We are about about .
a column and a half from gaza. That's why you hear the firing in the background.
This war that has been tarring this region apart, this war that arguably has been the focus of the entire world for the past few months there IT was just right there, write in front of us.
You're going to hear that all day you are on even hear helicopters firing.
And here in between the boobs of how its are sending fire across the border, I was doing my best to focus on the historian and former israeli ambassador to the us, Michael orin face.
century B. C. Roman gentle.
He was telling me the story of a roman general named lucius quintus since anat.
But he was also a farmer, and all you want to do go back to his pow. And every time he went back to his paul, the room republic came and said, we need you to come back and be a general.
a general who walked the world five hundred years before jesus was born, not too far from the spot we were now standing.
And the since and atis myth is a foundational myth for the american revolution. It's washington. They wanted to do this farm, you know.
you wanted to under his own .
video in tory, that kept come back and said, no, you ve got to go to lean army and that is why the um image of insanity, tim blazed on the roof of the house representatives of washington.
Now most israelis have never heard the name since in attis. In israel, romans are remembered less for their architecture or their acquired x then, for the fact that they destroyed the jewish temple in jerusalem two thousand years ago, slaughtered and sold its inhabitants. And we named the land syria palestina. What's the relevance .
for since the smith, though not said as much, is also a foundation israeli .
met the jewish people.
Michael told me, who long outlive the roman empire and reconstituted the jewish national home in the land those romans had once conquered, are in many ways, the democratic errors to, since anais, starting with a very first men and women who built this country, israel's version of our founding fathers .
is our extra. It's David been growing. It's most of it's honos nish. People would just want to a farm, but they were called to pick up arms and defend their country.
But a lot has changed since the time of David bet gyan. A lot has changed in the past seventy five years. Israel's GDP is some five hundred billion dollars, is a high tech capital that prides itself on being the start up nation.
Television is full of over Price cocktails, just like manhattan, and Young people eager to make a big with their apps. In other words, just like here, the countries of twenty first century success and most israelis, despite the country's universal draft, believed that history and herri ism were were things that belonged to its past. But on october seven, twenty twenty three, that assumption was put to the test.
We are breaking news out of israel this morning, where homos has launched a surprise attack within israel's borders overnight.
Woke up today to find their worst nightmares had come true in the form of a massive surprise attack. But this deadly and unprecedented surprise blitz, as we speak, palestinian gunmen are inside israeli cities and towns, something we have never before.
Under the cover of the missile, a large scale infiltration began as hamas militants crossed by land, sea and air, even using .
by land, by sea and by air in the form of hamas gunman on paragliders broke into homes and claim to capture dozens of israeli israeli harass .
was seen driving an opening fire and vilified government tore through the streets.
We are on one of the major ways in southern israel. You would expect this road to be full on a holiday weekend. And instead you can see behind me just a stream of israeli special forces driving south towards the gas a border. And they are heading to confront those gunmen in the towners and cities in the south.
An ordinary citizens of israel were called to war.
Three hundred and sixty thousand israelis responded to the column. Every single reserve unit reported at least one hundred percent response. In some places, one hundred and fifty percent response. That means people who already the mobilized OK i'm showing up .
on on to fight that morning, men and women left their offices, close their laptops, kiss their children goodbye and abandoned their modern fields to pick up weapons, in many cases without waiting for instructions from the state or its army.
And that is an addition to the eight percent of us really were not volunteer in some way to take a vegetable, to go out and give blood. I provide food for the displaced people, eighty percent. And this is A A since nats nation, which is extraordinary today.
amazing. This is probably the strongest, most brazilian nation on earth. We don't have the government we deserve, and we don't have to even have yet the state that we deserve.
I am bar wise. And this is the free press in israel, a special mini series about our week reporting from the war still raging, one that israelis left and right see as existential. Today, what happens when a country has to ask its citizens the unthinkable? What are you willing to die for?
For me, I, I accept death. On that morning, I realized where I am going, and I told myself, that's IT. And I was full, full heart. That's IT. This is the the last .
day of of your life. I didn't have any dilma getting out the door when I called reserves that go.
Do we have to do? I put on my old uniforms, found the boots in the, in the garage and went straight away to the headquarters of the home front command.
What can happen here can happen elsewhere in the world, in europe. And yes, even in the united states.
It's a question that feels so outside of the current american experience, what would I do if I had to fight for my home, for my family, for my nation? Once the last time any of us asked ourselves such questions.
I think the sense in this model has fAllen out of favor. And large parts of america, certainly in delete educated parts of america, those things that going to leave you hedge fun, take your counter.
But when israel citizens were confronted with the worst thing imaginable, what came back was a level of civic obligation, of duty and of sacrifice, that they themselves didn't even think they were capable.
love IT wasn't even a question, were not going abandon people in israel.
hundreds of thousands of people we're waiting at home just fall in older, but they were like lions trap in a cage, just waiting to go and save life. They didn't know what to do. I can assure you i'm going to fight for the destiny of israel as I fought for the destiny of israel all my life. We will continue .
to live on our sort. We will defend ourselves. We will stand united against enemies who want to destroy us.
They actually want to destroy us. This isn't word war one style propaganda. They say IT, and we will make sure they can't.
Would we do the same?
Today, part one running toward fire.
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So I think the first place I want to start is how profoundly different israel feels on this trip, how everyone that i've spoken to so far says they were one person, or even one kind of israeli on october six. And there are someone completely different on october seven. And in all the days that have passed since then, and I wondered how you felt.
israel went through a near death experience for the first time of our lives, we had a moment where we could imagine that the whole thing is over, that the whole thing ended.
This is Michael godman. I had never met him before, but I had followed his work for a long time in the jewish world. He's a little bit of a celebrity, a public intellectual, a best selling author and someone who is. So add pt at putting a temporary events in a historic context. I SAT with him in a studio in jerusalem on a rady friday afternoon, just before the sabis began.
Now you know how, when individuals have a newer death experience, they were transformed because they learned that life should not be trivialized as a country. We had a near death experience and now were transformed because we know that jew sovereign tea should not be taken for granted.
IT can't be trivialized the founding fathers and mother's of israel, the experience israel, as a miracle that is fragile, because they lived in two different periods of history. They lived in a period where the jews didn't have a state of their own. And they lived, after forty eight, where they do have the state of their own, and they could see the difference, and they could value what a jewish state means.
They can value IT because they remember a time where IT didn't exist. They can imagine a possibility that I also will not exist in the future. So you invest in IT, you build IT and you don't mess around with IT and you don't risk IT.
Second generation comes along. Remember that it's a miracle, but it's not as amazing. A third generation is less a miracle.
It's much more trivialized. For generation is born into a world where they could not imagine the state of visual doesn't exist as well. Doesn't seem so amazing.
It's just regular. It's Normal. It's regular in life.
One of the paradoxes of success and security, Michael told me, is that you lose the instinct for danger. You lose the sense that everything about the way you live is something that other people to make real. And that's exactly what happened over the past generations in israel.
You think it's here to stay. You think I can't vanish. That's when you start instead of building IT, you start fighting with other groups and start the to ruling IT. The history of jewish coretti is that almost always IT ends. The enemies come from outside to end what always begins from the inside.
That massive protest in israel igniting as israeli lawmakers approve a key part of a devise ve plan to overhaul the country's judicial system, israeli media says. Nearly a year before hmos broke down the fence and invaded southern israel, the country was on the brink of a civil disaster. In january twenty twenty three, huge protests erupted across the country.
This is the emergency time for the democracy of israel, and we hold here to fight for the liberal democracy and our rights in a the jewish state, which was establish ty five years ago.
Now the details of what Spark those protest, I admit, are a little hard to follow. But the headline is this, the nettin yahoo government proposed what they framed as a reform, a necessary one that would restrain the power of an activist court and bring israel in line with other western democracies. Critics saw IT very differently. They said that if this law passed, IT would weaken the judicial branch and give the net yahoo government unprecedented power. In other words, they believe that this reform was a kin to waging war on democracy itself.
We all have to fight for our rights because of the plans of bingo that want to turn this nation into a dictatorship. What we are doing .
here tonight, protesting, and guess the government wants to get all the power to details. I take all the rights from our citizens. And so every saturday night, for nine months straight, israel's across the country and from all walks of life, hundreds of thousands of them.
the entire high tech sector, its doctors, it's pilots, it's reserve special forces units, it's a teachers, it's people that are coming from the center, from the left, from the moderate right, it's all over the country.
took to the streets.
I can spend the last year, so every day, night, out on the streets of my wife protesting.
One of those people is a twenty eight old who I met in. He's a university students studying business and economics. Or withholding his name due to his current military rank, his position in the army.
Do you want introduce yourself?
sure. how?
How should we do that for today?
We'll call him adam. So you told me that you can share your name, but maybe explain what you've been doing for the past decade of your life .
here in israel. Well, for the past over ten years now, i've been a most of time serving in the military. I spent eight and half years a special forces.
You in the f moved israel, and I was nineteen. After spending a gap year in the country, I fact like I needed to do my part. So I planned on spending three years in the military. Three turned into eight and half. Come to here today.
Can you give us any kind of sense of what you did for those in half years?
Not really sorry. Can really get into IT.
okay. So you spend eight and half years in the special forces unit in the military.
Did you when you move here.
when you were nineteen and throughout that time, would you say you had a political world view?
I'd say had a very idealistic world view.
Growing turmoil in israel .
fahri protest .
erupting in the streets and .
I israeli cities tonight erupting in protest after prime .
minister been during this period of unrest with adam went out to protest BBS proposed judicial al reform every saturday night.
an estimated three hundred thousand citizens marching saturday.
many alleging the plan is a power grab that could make israel with his wife.
He was important for us to do what we could try to make a difference, to stand up against what we thought was, uh, a scary direction that our country was taking. And especially for someone like me who chose to be here. And I found IT particularly difficult, saying what was happening around me.
I remember first few weeks after the protest, I actually set down and wrote down some thoughts about IT that, you know, as a loans audio came israel, under a certain assumption that this is what i'm going fighting for. I M standing up for taking my time and potentially my life for I felt a little betrayed and scared that the countries onna take a direction that I was scared of being be part of. So IT was important for .
me to do what I could. There are people who genuinely believe that what was at stake in the current coalition government, that israel's democracy is fundamentally at stake. Do you feel that way?
I think his trust democracy is has always been hanging ing by a thin thread and give you look is very history. We have a we don't have a constitution that holds us in place like some other countries doing and were walking this tight rope of where we are jewish democratic cut. We find the baLance in between.
It's were already in a complex situation before the the current coalition. The protest is started. And again, we are relatively Young country but we need to to say that our democracies are on clad and untouched is far from the truth.
It's it's a kind of an internal struggle.
This is yet year go on, a sixty one year old decorated retirer general who spent most of his career in the army, eventually making his way to the number two position in the entire idf.
We have a sense of this struggle for many, many years. Most of the political violence in israel since sixty imposed on us by the extreme right. We need to admit IT, and therefore we need to fight IT, and we need to talk about IT loudly.
Glen's career in the army was cut short for being outspoken in his left towing political views against what he says is far right extremism in israel. He too has spent the last year protesting B. B.
I saw the detonation. You know, the fact that political figures, instead of, you know, providing a sense of a true vision to israel, adopted all kind of populist stance based on fear and hate, and try to convince the israel public that fear and hate, hate and fear, this is the best solution and the best, you know, future for israel. It's not. And I think that the we need to admit that extreme nationalism m, with a strong set of messianism. This is very wrong to israel.
These israeli reserve s are adding their names to a declaration that says there are no longer report for active duty in protest against the government's proposed judicial .
changes in israel. Everyone has to serve two to three years in the army. And when you're done with your service, you typically become an active service until the age of forty, or sometimes, in the case of national emergencies, even older.
There are among the growing number of pilot soldiers and intelligence offices who say they are acting on principle.
But doring this year of protest, many of service in israel, including the country's elite air force pilots, were so upset with the country's political direction that they announced that they would no longer report for reserve duty if they were called to service.
I came here today to convey the message that I will not serve the dictator. I will not serve in a dictatorship. I'm here to say that my kids won't grow up. And in a dictatorship, in a place that abolishes the basic human rights of the quality.
you know, history ally, the army was always left out of politics. yeah. And for good reasons, no, you don't tell me to be politicized.
This is both month. SHE served in intelligence for seven years and finished her service at the rank of captain. SHE, too, spent the last year protesting BBS government every single saturday night.
but at the same time also the coalition was doing things that were unprecedented in the way a democratic country should conduct itself. So reservists started a movement to sort of, you know, a movement against what the coalition was doing in israel. So and their pressure point was, and their pressure point was going, or not going into reserves.
And reserves are crucial for a state of emergency in israel. So if you have people who are saying we're not going to comment to reserves, that's a huge game changer in the ability of israel to defend itself. If push up the shop and really reserves don't show up.
did you support that kind of pressure?
I did. I did support IT.
We feed. We are doing the .
right thing and that we are fighting for the democracy of israel. This act that we are doing is to defend the democracy. And we feel that with the reserves are always the first to defend israel.
The mood in israel during that year, including an up to october six, was dire and dark at the time, the president of israel, as a her dog warned, I am anxious we are on the brink of an internal struggle that could consume us all.
the journalist .
muti freemen wrote for the free press, i've never seen politics seemed so alarmingly into the psyches and private lives of my friends or so many people losing sleep, seized by fear that the country they love won't make IT. He added, israelis are used to being surrounded by enemy states, but right now our own country is starting to feel like one. It's becoming ally share here in the states to talk about how amErica is so divided.
But the level of the fining in israel in twenty twenty three is something that we can't begin to imagine at scale here in america. Then came october seven, twenty twenty three, and those protests came to a halt. And the very same people who had been protesting their government and demanding changes that they felt were existential, they were desperate to stand up for the very existence of that country. And they not only showed up, but they showed up in droves.
So there you are. You going on protesting every saturday night almost for a year, thinking that the country that you move to was maybe coming to betray itself. And then we get to the morning, october seventh.
Where were you that morning?
And how did you first find out about what was happening in the southern part of the country?
I was a at home, a television. Now, Roberts, lucky or not, but the home, I defies some missiles at the center of the country itself. I get walking up by the sirens and the looks at my phone, and so that they had called my team and down to base at the time, they said, come down to base, unclear what's going on.
So I grab my bag and head out the door, told my wife that not sure what's going on, but i'll to be back later tonight. I'll be nothing I feel about time we get down to have dealt with IT and i'll be on control and help about and three go on. And then I drove down the base and was there for the rest of my team. We got argued together and we were out in the road by ten thirty. So and we're on our way out and our commander and the in the cars as I as lower weapons are about to get into a firefight.
While adam headed out to fight with his reserves unit a year, the retired general got a phone call from his sister.
I got a phone call from my sister, and SHE told me, can you take someone from the other festival area to safety? I thought they are all right, some mal location pin google panel, and that's what you did. So I told me, I look at, you know, at the map, I told myself, all right, there is such a mess around.
And what can I do right now in order to do something positive? All right, let's try to take them out of for the of the combating zone. So I took a rifle and other combat and gear and put on my old uniforms, found the boots in the the garage and draw my car to the south.
All on our way out to one of the keyboard seam, they told us there was an incident. And one of the keyboard team, again, they didn't tell us what incident and what we we were go do there right now there. And as we're getting closer, we start hearing gunshots and you see the cars that have been shot up and burned out inside the road. understand? Okay, this is not your average saturday.
Again.
here's adam. And we're coming up intersection and I was said we see a few guys think they were border security. They were shooting at something I would front of them.
And another one who had already been shot on the road, and we were, we come through the intersection and in front of us said, one of the terrorist pops out of a bus station and launches an R, P, G, A or first vehicle. We cut off the road and he missed think'll ly. And then we got involved in, I want to half long firefight with the terrorists there.
Beauty, rough, we lost. One of our guys there was with us. But managed finish off the terrace in the end and then moved on from there. We all checked amunition get back in the cars and headed IT up onto an other key woods at on the way there. Actually we had to drive through the the site of the novel stiva, which that was the moment we understood the scale of what we're dealing with her.
What did you see?
So are you driving down or towards the that direction we saw from pretty far off? The whole road is packed with cars. Hundreds will look like cars block in the road, and all of them are blown up, destroyed, run over by tanks on fire, absolute chaos in general. The day, the only way I can describe the feeling in this day IT was like a .
zambia pocalypse.
Those crazy films where you see the beginning when everything just goes to shit. That was the vive, everything on fire. Everything was, you smell burning plastic and bodies and hear gunshots everywhere.
And there was cars destroyed all the size. He was absolute fucking chaos, just insane. You don't know who's a terrorist and who's not. People pop up on the side the road do not sure for yours or theirs. It's just insanity.
We meet up with other military units out the day I just go that way, there's terrors over there where and there no centralized command, no one selling us what to do or driving around to understand what we can be most telling ful. And that's our for progressing through out the day. So as you drive through towards the the festival that we see the old roads back with cars, that's the first thing we see. So we drive off roads.
Do I get around IT? And as we're driving me off road, we see that in between the cars are just packed with bodies still along the road. We see um bomb shelters that are on the roads there.
And as you drive by, you see the bomb shelters are filled with dead bodies and just tiles. But at the same time, you take IT in, but you don't have time to process because you're focused on, okay, maybe there's terrorist out there. I don't want to get shot trying to focus on the threats you have in the area, not really taking in the horr of what you're seeing.
And for me afterwards, it's been much harder to see the the videos and things like that coming out after. It's A A lot hard to see and actually think some things in person when you in the moment you in the moment you do think with one hundred other things and party just doesn't take in the pretty horrible stuff that you see there. There are some some stuff to stuck with me. But 我在。
快点。
Have a few images of .
some just saying .
that the amount of bodies that were there was something that I wasn't prepared for.
I saw, you know, so many civilians killed along the .
roads again, generally get year go on.
you know, understood that all right, i'm driving my car to a combating zone, so it's safer to be in the fields. So I went off road and I drove my car through the fields until I reach them. I stop my car, you know, a very close to the exact location they sent me.
And I start, you know, I took my life with me and start shouting them, it's me, general gland. You are safe. You can come out of the of you from your head.
It's safe. It's OK. They were hiding in the bushes, and suddenly they popped up, and they were totally traumatized. And I don't them. All right, i'll take you right now back to safety.
I put them in my car and drove them out of the combating zone, out of the last, you know, checking and and then I got another phone call, this time from our its journalists. Talk me the same. All right.
Can you take my son out of the competing zone? You know, again, the same. Can you send me location? So I did IT all, all three times these three in all these kind of fruits.
I passed through the other festival location. IT was a mastic sco IT was terrible. This is the worst thing I ever saw in my life.
And I saw a lot, and I thought a lot, a lot in my life. I think it's hard maybe to explain what that looks like. You know, you drive, I drove my car between bodies, but this was spread all over the route. You know, from both sides of the route on my right hand side was still fighting. Exchanges know in so he told something which is you know like entering into hell.
When you left your wife that morning, you said, you know, i'll be home later today. How long did you end up doing what did early, early days of the war?
I didn't come home for two weeks until after that first, first incident, but I think we spent the next three, four, four days or so, five days having reconquer areas of the country. And the crazy part there, I think, was just the the constant being, I call having no idea where this was going to go. At one point, we were being called up the north because we thought there was going to be another war opening up with his baLance. So we were constant waiting for, waiting for the call to be sent up there. We're waiting for to gets sent back out things in the field.
While people like adam and yet ear fought on the ground, and then in gaza, people like both mart, who only a week earlier had been out in the streets protesting the government and even supported those reserves who are threatening not to serve, stepped up to work around the clock in the country's hostage command headquarters.
I heard from the army on october tenth, so three days after everything went down, they asked me to come in. And basically I went to work at the hostages command center. IT was obvious that I would cover in.
I I wanted to come and I wanted to help. Everyone in the country was just looking for how they can be helpful in this sort of situation. And so, yeah, I dropped to my unit.
And that was where I spent the next three months of the war. And as far as I know, everyone showed up big time. I think that is because what happened on october seven was a lot of people who are just abandoned and know for a lot of people in resort, but we're not going to be.
And people in israel and IT wasn't even a question, wasn't even like no one thought about IT twice. Everyone went and joined reserves, if they could, and if they couldn't, went to volunteer. And IT was obvious, was in a question .
to america. IT might seem really strange that a person who, every saturday for a year, going out into the streets, rain shine and protesting the government showed up without heat, explain that paradox to people. It's funny because I guess .
when you ask question IT does sound like a paradox. But for me, it's not it's not even a paradox. It's not a question and I think it's because I care deeply about israel.
I love israel very, very much. That's not to say that I don't have a lot of criticism about israel, have plenty of criticism, but I love this place I grew up here. I think the state of israel is important as the home for the jews.
Looking back throughout history and also looking at the past three months and and the response of the world, you do realize that it's really important to have israel. Um I gave the best years of my life or of my chinese, not of my life. I hope not one of my twice to my military service and i'm proud of that.
I'm happy that I did that. And then to see the the government taking israel into such a bad turn and bad direction IT makes me really, really sad and angry. And and so it's obvious to me that we need to protest the government and certain things that they are doing. But at the same time, i'm not going to abandon israel as my country, my service, my friends, my family, people who need protection. And I really believe that that's important.
The seventh was very visual.
Again, back to adam.
There were terrorists at your front door like the weeks's following. You had people patrolling kindergartens with the salt rifles, which is a crazy concept. But you can blame anybody because there was fear along.
Everybody, especially people, close the south, but even people all the way up in television, the same the country, people are scared, scared for the physical safety, yet touched done something. I was very, very a personal, I think, for everybody in this country. That holy shit, like there could be terrorist outside my door right now, like people were afraid there is something that i've never felt before in israel. And I don't think anybody had a question about being called up. There was never not one person that I spoken to has had to a doubt whether they needed to a do their part.
I know if you encounter this slogan that the Young, the Young now have one of fly me dota, not falling short of the funding generation of the forty eight generation.
This is goddy tob. He's an israeli journalist. S. T. I met with in java over coffee one afternoon.
The actual slogan is not falling short of the forty eight generation, and it's not even grammatically correct, but it's really powerful. Lot of fear of Young people you see on social media and you see as hashtags, and you see IT as bit because the soldiers are, you know, I interview this guy who refuses to take off his uniform. He was released from a reserve service and he said, i'm not going back. I'm not going back home. I'm not going back until this war is over.
If israel, in other words, is currently fighting a second war of independence award necessary for the very survival of the state than the Young men and women of this country are more than just soldiers. They are also a new generation of founders. I never planned .
spending so much time here. I planned doing three years in the military and adding back home. But I think, as I said, and then give, if anything, this words helped me, reminded me why this space is important.
And it's important for me that my family and I maintain a connection here. Because it's but that we wanted not part of who we are as jews are. They believe that like we can't stick our heads in the sand.
Easy to stick her head in the sand and pretend like. IT would be at least easy to go back to the states and stake her head in the sand and live out montana a pretend like there's no war and nothing going on. As much as i'd like to get a cat in out mountains a one day, it's I don't I live myself doing something like that.
I I think I have driving spent enough time here and seeing what's going on and and feeling a part of what is to be a due, what is to be israeli. I think um to ignore that now would be. I don't think a bit to live in myself.
Adam has been fighting with his reserves unit in and out of gaza for the last five months. He egon is now running to lead israel's major liberal party, the labor party, and both month served in reserves for three months before returning to her Normal tech job, but he still occasionally goes back to serve at her unit. When they color up, i'll be right back.
Explaining here.
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solarcity. Again, scholar mika, good israel.
today's society with no father, figure out a lot of brotherhood and sister hood is, don't feel like we have someone on the top that there has our best intentions in mind, but even if we don't feel like we have someone to talk looking after us, we're looking after each other. That israel to tremendous out of solidity and not a lot of trust, almost always in war, when people unite, they unite around the leader. In israel, we united, and we forgot about the leader. So what happened occurred seven is that when we realized how from the top nothing was functioning during that same day, we had a unprecedented outburst of his really brave.
of .
unbelievable, by the way, Perry, which country would you rather a country that's all completely functioning and everything is is in its place on the top, but like, kind of rotten and lazy and this functional from the bottom or the other way around, a live spirit from the bottom. bravery. And october seven, solidity, every sense. October eight, that there are a compensate for everything that didn't work and doesn't work from the top. So we have here like a glimpse into like the inner psychist of the israeli architecture, where is very strong from the bottom in very problem .
than informs up.
It's very simple. We have a very bad government, but we have a wonderful people, and the wonderful people will prevail.
After my conversation with .
Michael orin about the roman general since and attis, I found myself wanting to read up more about him. And one thing I found is that George washington is known as the americans in snati. s.
It's because he willingly gave up power. It's because he put the nation ahead of himself, and it's because even though he wanted to sit under his own vine and figtree, he felt duty bound his country. These days in america, near impossible to imagine a modern washington.
It's equally hard to imagine an american elite with a sense of no blessing bleach. Can you pick you? The people running our hetch funds and our startups leaving them behind for the battle field, or a rally cry across this country about not falling short of the seventy and seventy six xers. And yet before october seven, is really is probably couldn't have imagined that either for themselves. Then the most serious thing image able was upon them, and the most serious men and women I have ever encountered .
emerge to confront.
来来来， one last thing .
as united as israel is in the midst of this war, the failures of netty, yahoo and his coalition have not been forgotten or forgiven. Babies approval rating sits at something like fifteen percent, and debates about went to hold the next election to replace him and his coalition are already underway.
That's another way that israeli, these latter days since in notices differ from the story of the ancient roman general, the buying area of war and peace, the pastoral in the military. That's the luxury of powerful nations and empires, a small democracy whose very existence is contested by populous. Autographs doesn't have the privilege, as since an attest did, of going from the field, the battle to the field, to till. So for israeli is the hard work of democracy just may have to be done alongside the hard work of actually physically defending their nation.
How big is can man? You can. Make thanks.
as always, for listening. Since the earliest hours of october seven, twenty, twenty three, we have published more than one hundred and fifty reports, features, essays, podcast and videos on this story, many from on the ground in israel, palestinian territories and more recently, lebanon in syria.
In the free press today, you'll find all of those stories presented in one place as a resource, a historical record, and also as a reminder of the kind of journalism you're supporting when you support the free press. To see that, go to the fp dot com or look in the shower notes of this episode. Last but not least, to support the work we do, please consider becoming a paid subscriber today will see.
You next time.